Q: There is a lot that I want to ask you about the government shutdown and foreign policy, but I wanted to start with health care. The signature element of your health care law went online this week, and the interest seems to have really exceeded expectations, but there were some serious glitches with the online systems. And our reporting shows that the number of people who actually managed to sign up for insurance in the states using the federal system was in the single digits. How many people have actually signed up for insurance this week?

THE PRESIDENT: Well, I don’t have the numbers yet. What we know is that, as you indicated, the interest way exceeded expectations and that’s the good news. It shows that people really need and want affordable health care. And the product is a really good one. It turns out that choice and competition work. So what’s happened is you’ve got private insurers who have bid to get into this system to offer affordable health care at significantly lower prices than anybody could buy in the individual market, because basically they’re now part of a big group.

And it is true that what’s happened is the website got overwhelmed by the volume. And folks are working around the clock and have been systematically reducing the wait times, but we are confident that over the course of the six months – because it’s important to remember people have six months to sign up – that we are going to probably exceed what anybody expected in terms of the amount of interest that people have.

…. we asked the liberal-leaning actor for his thoughts about the ongoing government shutdown. He had many — on John Boehner’s grand strategy, on the “idiots” who think we don’t need government, and on Ted Cruz’s reading of Green Eggs and Ham.

“People keep talking about how this has to be a great negotiation, but there isn’t any negotiating a law. We negotiate on all these other topics, but this was put into law, and [Obama] was reelected on it. It was reaffirmed, it was passed through the Supreme Court — it’s a law. You don’t like it? Win an election. That’s how it works…..”

…. “Shutting down the government is not how you make government work. And anybody who thinks we don’t need it is an idiot.”

I think we linked this already, but it’s so good it can’t be linked enough:

Kurt Eichenwald: The Truth About Obamacare and How It Solves the Suffering of the Insured

Last week, I wrote a lengthy piece to refute the Republican lies about Obamacare. This week, I am going to write about some of the truths.

… Normally, I would start this discussion by providing chapter-and-verse details about the 47 million men, women, and children who now have the opportunity to obtain health insurance, to live longer and healthier lives, to avoid needless bankruptcies. But, in what to me is one of the saddest developments in our nation’s history, that reality is irrelevant to ardent Obamacare opponents.

Words like “takers” and “slackers” are thrown at the uninsured, as if they have brought their pre-existing conditions, jobs without benefits, or low-paying positions on themselves…..

…. I don’t expect to persuade the people who really believe all the malarkey about death panels and socialism. They have been lied to for so long that I think it will take years before they will be able to understand how badly they have been used. But, hopefully, there are those who want to know why Obamacare exists and what the point of it is. And when you know the truth, you will understand that — for all of its imperfections — Obamacare is an essential step toward healing the deeply sick American health-care system.

ThinkProgress: How A Rand Paul Republican From Alabama Learned To Love Obamacare

Joshua Pittman is a 31-year-old self-employed videographer from Montgomery, Alabama. A libertarian Republican who voted for Ron Paul in 2012 and believes that Sen. Rand Paul is the future of the GOP …. But on Tuesday morning, Pittman logged on to HealthCare.gov and after some initial glitches and delays, successfully enrolled in a Bronze-level Obamacare health insurance plan….

Though he initially supported repealing the law, Pittman became curious about Obamacare in the days and weeks before it launched …. Asked what he liked, Pittman highlighted its prohibition against denying coverage to people with pre-existing conditions, noting that he wouldn’t be able to find coverage without it….

… Pittman doesn’t believe that Obamacare is perfect, but says Republicans in Congress should stop trying to repeal the law and give it a chance to work. “As a Republican, I think [the GOP’s repeal effort] is childish and I think this is the wrong way to lead… it’s babyish and I think as a party it just reflects negatively upon us,” he explains.

…. I currently pay $348 per month for health insurance, with a $1500 deductible. For a plan with the same level of coverage, I will now pay $297 per month, with a $1000 deductible. This will save me $1100 on health care in 2014. That’s $1100 that I will spend on something other than health care, money that will stimulate the economy. That money did not come from other taxpayers. The savings came as a result of setting up an exchange that would allow everyone to access group buying power.

…. the reason insurers can no longer discriminate against me for my pre-existing condition is because of the individual mandate. If there were no mandate forcing healthy people into the risk pool, then everyone would simply wait until they were sick to get insurance, and the entire insurance system would collapse.

… the Teahadists will scream about losing our freedoms, but as best as I can tell, the only freedoms I’m losing here are the freedom to be in pain and the freedom to overpay for health insurance.

Sorry, Senator Cruz, but contrary to what you wailed no fewer than 100 times during the course of your 21-hour fake filibuster/ideological hissy fit… Obamacare is working, chief.

EgbertoWillies: Even In Texas The Republican Caricature Of Obamacare Is Meeting Reality

Texas Governor Rick Perry has been one of the biggest obstructionists to the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) in Texas along with the entire Republican Party nationally. Inasmuch as Texas is the state with the highest rate of uninsured citizens he refused Obamacare’s expansion of Medicaid. For those with pre-existing condition in Texas who were either in the high priced high risk Texas insurance pool or were uninsured because of the cost of these high risk pools, Obamacare comes to the rescue even here in Texas.

Anyone wondering why the Right Wing Tea Party Republicans are in a frenzy, one need only see what is happening now that the reality of the Affordable Care Act is emerging. The lies they told are coming back to bite them.

They are attempting to discourage young American citizens from going to the exchanges by telling them Obamacare will either be too expensive or an intrusion from the government. Good things are happening however. Inasmuch as the Right Wing is being outright destructive with the nation’s economy in the attempt to derail Obamacare, empirical and factual data is proven to be a hindrance to their obstructionist tactics.

The State Health Bureaucracy in Texas is actually promoting Obamacare. That is a feat in its own right. On October 1st, the Obamacare health exchange servers were overwhelmed because of the inordinately large number of people accessing it.

…. It’s long been clear that the great fear of the Republican Party was not that health reform would fail, but that it would succeed. And developments since Tuesday, when the exchanges on which individuals will buy health insurance opened for business, strongly suggest that their worst fears will indeed be realized: This thing is going to work.

…. the glitches of October won’t matter in the long run. But why are they actually encouraging? Because they appear, for the most part, to be the result of the sheer volume of traffic, which has been much heavier than expected. And this means that one big worry of Obamacare supporters — that not enough people knew about the program, so that many eligible Americans would fail to sign up — is receding fast.

….. Obamacare is off to a good start, with even the bad news being really good news for the program’s future. We’re not quite there yet, but more and more, it looks as if health reform is here to stay.

Sarah Palin finally got her death panels — a direct blow from the Republican House. In shutting down the government, leaving 800,000 people without a paycheck and draining the economy of $300 million a day, the Party of Madness also took away last-chance cancer trials for children at the National Institutes of Health.

And now that the pain that was dismissed as a trifle on Monday, a “slimdown” according to the chuckleheads at Fox News, is revealed as tragic by mid-week, the very radicals who caused the havoc are trying to say it’s not their fault.

It’s too late. They flunked hostage-taking. About 30 or so Republicans in the House, bunkered in gerrymandered districts while breathing the oxygen of delusion, are now part of a cast of miscreants who have stood firmly on the wrong side of history. The headline, today and 50 years from now, will be the same: Republicans closed the government to keep millions of their fellow Americans from getting affordable health care.

Our view: There is no room to ‘negotiate’ when extremists take the federal government hostage — and threaten to do the same to the economy

With the shutdown dragging along and no discernible progress coming out of Wednesday’s meeting between President Barack Obama and Congressional leaders, Republicans bemoaned the Democrats’ unwillingness to negotiate. They’ll negotiate with the president of Iran, was the common GOP talking point, but they won’t talk to us.

Actually, the more appropriate comparison might have been that President Obama didn’t negotiate with foreign terrorists out to hurt the country, and he isn’t rewarding similar tactics back home. California Rep. George Miller, a Democrat, may have gone too far when he recently referred to the tea party attack on Obamacare as a “jihad” on the House floor, but not by too much.

House Democratic leaders believe they have hit on a new way to potentially force House Republican leaders into allowing a vote on a “clean CR” funding the government without any defunding of Obamacare attached.

At last count, as many as two dozen House Republicans appear prepared to vote for a clean CR. With Democrats included, that means a majority of the House of Representatives would vote right now to reopen the government. But the House GOP leadership won’t allow such a vote.

Dems have hit on a way to use a “discharge petition,” which forces a House vote if a majority of Representatives signs it, to try to force the issue. Previously, it was thought this could not work, because a discharge petition takes 30 legislative days to ripen, so if this were tried with the clean CR that passed the Senate, this couldn’t bear fruit until some time in November.

But now House Democrats say they have found a previously filed bill to use as a discharge petition — one that would fund the government at sequester levels.

Yes, I found rates in a roundabout way. There is a spreadsheet through healthcare.gov that lists broad comparisons of the 34 states they govt either runs or is in partnership with.

In my zeal, I misread the comparisons somewhat when I tweeted and it will cost me a little more than my monthly medications. But with subsidies, yes – I will be paying for really decent, comprehensive health care what I now pay out of pocket for my monthly meds. There may be some additional tweaking. I cannot sign up yet until I talk to my accountant since my very small ‘corporation’ has just my husband and I as ’employees’ and I need to dig deeper into all of those options. But I now have a ball park on what it’s going to cost.

completely, utterly uninsurable until ACA, at any price. The insurance I was forced to carry as self-employed never gave me peace of mind, covered nothing, did not cover my asthma, etc.

ACA is indeed freedom. I had lived under a ‘death panel’ created by the greedy, heartless American system and the Republicans who enabled it. This is freedom.

I will continue to try to get to my actual rates and comparison shop. Traffic was still very heavy as of last night. I hope to find a plan that includes my asthma doctor. RWNJ accountant had led me to believe that these were fly-by-night insurance companies in the exchanges in IL. There are a good number of plans – I believe if there were tons more of choices it would be really overwhelming. That’s what they said about MA experience as well – there were too many choices in the beginning. But there are enough to choose from that make you feel you have a good selection. BCBS, Aetna, Humana, some others. I have every confidence that the exchanges contain quality choices.

There were plenty of computer glitches when millions of Americans went online to check out their options for affordable insurance policies on the new health care exchanges that opened for business this week. It was frustrating, but it was also an indication of overwhelming interest that exceeded all predictions.

///

Polls show that most uninsured adults want health insurance and plan to get it; many will do so because the law requires them to obtain coverage or pay a penalty. The penalty an uninsured adult will have to pay is relatively low for 2014, only $95, but it rises to $325 for 2015 and to $695 for 2016.

In an astonishingly irresponsible campaign, conservative advocacy groups are urging college students and other young people to pay the penalty and forget the insurance. But even those who consider themselves “young invincibles” are vulnerable to catastrophic accidents or life-threatening infections.

Administration officials believe that enrollment will start slowly but will spike upward to meet the mid-December deadline for full-year coverage beginning on Jan. 1, 2014. They expect another spike in enrollment numbers near the March 31 deadline for coverage for the rest of 2014. In the end, people will enroll if they can find insurance that meets their medical needs and their budgets. There is good reason to believe they will.

Imagine what people can do and dream if they don’t have the specter of disaster from a health crisis looming over them. Of course, none of that matters to the sociopaths.

TPV had a great post the other day – 46% less Dem’s voted in 2010, 25% less Republicans. It wasn’t a Republican/tea party wave, it was Dem’s not bothering to be citizens and ceding our government to abject sociopaths. Will we ever learn, MP?

This would be a big haha if it wasn’t so sad and idiotic. Just heard the shutdown called the “Seinfeld shutdown” because it’s a shutdown about nothing.
Isn’t this the most maddening and frustrating development ever? All this nonsense and serious reverberations here and around the world because of a small band of extremist, delusional dumbheads? I need a voodoo doll and some long needles——or something. Grrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

Media is teaming up with Republican pollsters to push a “both sides to blame” meme. I think MSM really thought that PBO/Reid would have budged by now and agreed to pass all those piecemeal bills that the GOP house was pushing, while still leaving other agencies hostage over the ACA. But now Pelosi has filed the discharge petition, and it looks like the GOP is going to have to vote on clean CR bill, the media is panicking and reverting to their *trusted* weapon – manufactured polls.

I’m also convinced that there will be a campaign to seed doubt among the “liberal” base. We can expect seeing more and more posts on progressive blogs about “Obama is going to cave, democrats will cave” . LOTS of them by republican operatives pretending to be disgruntled democrats…

I tweeted this yesterday, last night, really, but I think this has to be a message that is repeated over and over. The GOP may have the House d/t gerrymandering but it is not the voice of Americans. So, TOD tweeters, let’s get this out there. Do your own tweets and let’s blanket th country.

In 2012 Dems got 1.4 million more votes for House, Dems got 11 million more for Senate, Obama beat Romney by 5 million GOP not voice of US

good question Alice, my thought is this.. if raising the debt ceiling and voting on a budget are jobs of Congress designated by our Constitution, is Congress (House repubs) breaking Constitutional Law by not fulfilling their job requirements?

John miller (Japa) just tweeted that we won house by 1.4 million votes in 12.
Does anybody know the exact figures we would have to win by to retake the house?
We won 10 seats in 12, so I figure we would have to win by about 3 million votes!

Apparently the latino turnout was piss poor at under 50% even in 2012. DCCC need to move their sorry asses to get these voters to polls in 2014 and 2016. They need to target only about 50 marginal seats and plough some good money and ground work to retake the house. The same with the senate.

57andFemale, so glad you’ve been able to research specifics about Obamacare for you. (Note to Republicans: there’s a *reason* the LAW is called the Affordable Care Act (hint: first word of the statute.)

Carolyn mentioned yesterday that she discussed how GOP congressional action is a threat to our constitutional democracy with her freshmen college students. And BobFR has tirelessly tweeted this message.

As a child, we all knew that “majority rules with minority rights,” long before high school Civics. Is this still being taught to our kids?

I hope this week’s TIME magazine cover sparks discussion in classrooms across the country, along with the realization that a while ago America became a minority-majority nation (meaning Whites no longer comprise 50%+ of the popultion).

The fact that Whites are no longer a majority means the tea party die-hards *have* to dismiss the idea of “majority rules.” It’s also why they were so upset recently about a South Asian Miss America; back in 2000 the media didn’t mention a backlash when the first Asian American became Miss America (Filipina).

So the 23% who believe our President is a Kenyan Muslim socialist also agree that the majority does not rule (since they can no longer claim that they represent the majority of Americans).
twitter.com/TIME/status/385728274606739457

Good morning fellow TODbots!! It’s a beautiful Saturday morning here in MT. What a wonderful R & S. So much information. I think the Repubs are going to pay big for this disaster they are bringing on America. Do hope this is their death kill.

Today is homecoming off to the market and the parade. Have a great day.

Superb coverage of the shutdown and the GOPs real motive behind it all…TOD is a crucial place to come to get the real deal….MsChips…BTs…TOD posters…everyone….who contributes to this magnificent place…offering not just solace but real analysis and clarity at time when the GOP and their allies in the MSM seek to confuse and mislead the American People….

As Bob has said and others have chimed in…we are at a crossroads….this is where we must make our stand…I know that may sound dire…but it is what it is….

for folks who have low information…this is what I tell them…that there are anti government people in Congress who want to blow up the government…destroy it…it is not just a spin..it is real…and that we must back our President and the DEMs in Congress…in their stance…

The networks should be fined by the FCC every time they *mention* 2016.

JHC, it’s less than one year since the last election, and the MSM completely ignore the results of that election. Cannot tolerate any online or television stories about this hyped speculation.

Also, the MSM has been about 100% this year with every one of their speculations. Really sick that these people get paid for spewing this nonsense and for not “deigning” to see what’s around them — how many people they encounter every day who do not have premium healthcare like the MSM do, and whose families face the same medical challenges as the elite.

BTW, how’s the Napa fire?

I’m located in the windiest spot on this map (from yesterday), but conditions will change this week, even a slight chance of light rain.

And Boehner is attacking his own country with his words
‘We Are Locked In An Epic Battle’
Orator he is not, Churchill he is not – but somewhere in his twisted mind he thinks shutting down a democratically elected government is a winning move in an epic battle.

I fully expect him to start quoting Churchill – or perhaps more likely Roosevelt – and would be laughing uncontrollably – except that there is nothing to laugh about watching this fool attempt to destroy a great country.

Can they not talk to people they encounter in their daily routines (or are they in their limos and have staff get their groceries, etc. — do they not travel in cabs and pick something up from a small business or convenience store — do they not realize that 10% of our population do not have health insurance? Do they consider what would be happening in the middle East now if a neo-con puppet were in office?).

OH. My. God. I’ll wait to hear what was her rationale, because it doesn’t make any sense. If they’re alike it’s in some very superficial way. Barack Obama is as knowledgeable as Boehner is ignorant. He is as courageous as Boehner is a coward. He is as honest as Boehner is sleazy. And on and on…

I think she means that they are alike (stubborn) because neither is willing to negotiate. But that is an intellectually dishonest argument because PBO already negotiated the CR budget at much lower funding levels (maintaining sequester) than he or his party would have liked. The R’s (including Boehner) claimed that they had gotten what they wanted, but now refuse to pass the CR unless they defund Obamacare?

Saw this discussion and heard that idiotic comparison by MHP—–that Obama and Boehner are Just Alike—why, they could be twins! I was going to say for all her innate intelligence, MHP doesn’t even have the insight of a bug. This person said it better….and what a waste of air time—that show.

I haven’t heard anyone say why Melissa H. Perry made the comment about Boehner and POTUS are alike. If anyone heard her say, did she say why she feel that way? Sometimes I watch her, sometimes I don’t. Today I didn’t.

In their governing style—-both are hands off, just sit back and allow things to happen, don’t direct traffic or have a say in anything. A ridiculous comparison—–relating President Obama and Boehner in any way. They are about as far apart in all ways as 2 people could be.

A largely unremarked element of the etiology of the prion disease currently afflicting the Republican party — and therefore, alas, the country — is the carefully cultivated, and by now deeply inculcated, sense of conservative victimhood that has been a prime element of conservatism’s emotional appeal since long before Richard Nixon rose to power on it. They are always beset. They are always besieged. They are always surrounded — by intellectuals, by scientists, by the all-powerful Left that exists primarily in their imaginations, because it certainly doesn’t exist in American politics, and hasn’t since the days of Joe McCarthy. Culturally, this always has been expressed partly by the endless conservative bleating that somebody, somewhere is getting laid. The Gospels tell us that the gates of hell will not prevail against Christ’s church. The Republicans find their faith imperiled by Barney Frank’s marriage. There is always a shadow on the wall, a monster in the closet, a mysterious rustling in the teeming underbrush of the conservative Id.

In my lifetime alone, I’ve seen Nixon play this like a violin, Goldwater delegates proudly chanting their sagebrush songs of rebellion, Agnew intimidate the media with their own intellectual achievement, as though an advanced degree was smuggling drugs, and now this bunch, the natural heirs to decades of conservatives who have fought the dragons in their own minds, and who, like Marlin Stutzman, seem mystified that they have not yet been awarded the Order Of The Legion Of Courage. Vainglorious louts, driving the nails into their own palms…

Nena, you are right about Abe Lincoln being one term member of the U.S. House of Representatives. But you have typo in your post. In 1880 Lincoln had been dead for 15 years. I am sure you meant to say the 1840s. President Lincoln, like President Obama served 8 years in the Illinois legislature (1834-1846). In 1846 he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives where he served one term (1847-1849) in the 30th Congress. He ran for the U. S. Senate in 1856 but lost the race to Stephen Douglas. When Lincoln was elected President in 1860, his total experience in elective office was ten years: 2 in the House of Representatives and 8 in the Illinois legislature (House of Rep). In Comparison, President Obama had served twelve years in elective office: 8 in the Illinois legislature (Senate) and 4 in the U.S. Senate.

The article of The Perpetual Campaign especially rings true to me. Republicans are not able to deal with being in the minority. Pure and simple. I think though he underestimates the racial factor, as far as “the base” is concerned. The level of pure hate has reached unprecedented levels. It’s all about being afraid of the change in demographics. This is something new.

But yeah, the obstruction would be as fierce for a white president.

I would also say: the plutocrats, this time, have been even more active in their enabling, supporting the obstructionists. Why ? Because they’re more afraid of Barack Obama than they were of Bill Clinton or Jimmy Carter. They know that Barack Obama is more of a threat to the status quo than Bill Clinton or Jimmy Carter ever were.